Comments on: no justice, no peace? (on the relationship between these concepts)http://peterlevine.ws/?p=18918
A Blog for Civic RenewalTue, 06 Feb 2018 19:59:00 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.8By: Andrea Morisette Grazzinihttp://peterlevine.ws/?p=18918#comment-30345
Tue, 12 Sep 2017 19:08:00 +0000http://peterlevine.ws/?p=18918#comment-30345I find myself revisiting King’s (earlier) ‘A Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ when questions of peace, nonviolence and justice emerge. He addresses situations that elicit violence in the pursuit of justice as predictable when the themes of “negative peace” prevail. Namely when white moderates, in particular, provide mostly superficial lip service at best, while they more-so misjudge tension, which is part and parcel of change, as fuel for violence. And that applauding or aggrandizing faux “peace” or “order” that masks injustices to preserve them is as, or more, immoral than violence in the pursuit of justice. He warns that if whites continue to mischaracterize non-violent methods, and this persists as their reason or excuse for rejecting or avoiding active engagement in social justice efforts, then real violence is all but inevitable–

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action” (…) Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

(…) we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. (…)

(Y)ou assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? (…) We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.

(…) And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies–a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare. So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? (…)

I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather “nonviolently” in public. But for what purpose? (…) I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. (…) As T. S. Eliot has said: ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.'” http://www.metoweracialhealing.com/martin-luther-king